Health News

Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center in Scottsdale

At the Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center, two cancer-care coordinators are in place to "take a patient from distress to calm," as one of them said.

It's a job that didn't exist when Melanie O'Hara and Marlene Miller were looking for careers.
Melanie O'Hara

People often ask Melanie O'Hara why she would switch in midlife from work as an accountant to a potentially heart-wrenching career in oncology.

Yes, it is sad to see people who have had a difficult life to begin with face still another challenge. Or to watch someone you've helped for years move toward the end of life.

"But people with cancer learn not to major in minor things," O'Hara says. "They know what's important. I try to take their philosophy over into the rest of my life."

Plus, there are survivors, more and more of them as medical breakthroughs make treatments more effective.

For some survivors, cancer becomes a chronic disease, perhaps with long-term side effects to be managed. But most patients consider that better than the alternative, says O'Hara, 55, of Fountain Hills.

"Cancer survivorship has become a new phase in these patients' lives," O'Hara says.
Marlene Miller

Marlene Miller is one of eight siblings, all of whom helped care for their mother when she was diagnosed with cancer.

Their mother died at age 57, and three of her five daughters, including Miller (far left), eventually chose careers as registered nurses.

Nurturing "was a pathway I always knew I'd follow," she says.

But early in her career, there were no cancer-care coordinators.

"Cancer patients then had no one to put the picture together for them," says Miller, 57, of Fountain Hills. "Health care is so complicated. You really need someone who can take a patient from distress to calm."

Miller remembers a young mother diagnosed with cancer of the voice box, or larynx, soon after giving birth to her first child. In those days, surgeons were unable to spare the organ. The woman fretted about her child never hearing her voice -- or perhaps even growing up motherless.

"She recorded herself for an entire day before the surgery because she didn't know if she would see her daughter graduate from school or get married."

But 25 years later, the patient and her husband walked their daughter down the aisle.

Best known for: Center for Endocrine and Pancreatic Surgery, bone-marrow transplant program and Sarcoma Center of Excellence, one of the few centers in the U.S. that specializes in treating sarcoma, or cancer of the bone.

Also: Piper is one of the few dedicated programs in the country to offer Phase I clinical trials.

O'Hara's favorite way to stay healthy

"Because I've always required a lot of myself, I make a list of what I have to do. Now I break the list in half and get half of it done. Then I say, 'I've accomplished what I need to for today.' "

Miller's favorite way to stay healthy

"Exercise. When I go home, I think through the day while walking on the treadmill. It's important to me at the end of the day to know that I did everything I could to help someone. That's my way to release."
hospital photo from jim christy studio; map by andreA heser/the republic